


ctrl+alt+del

by vands88



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: (kind of), (only rated because of drug mention), (sort of), Accidental Sequel, Asexuality, Cuddles, Elliot Needs A Hug, Episode Related, Episode: s01e06 br4ve-trave1er, Episode: s01e10 zer0-day, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mary Sue, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV First Person, Post-Season/Series 01, Reader-Insert, Season/Series 01, Self-Insert, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4415408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I think I sometimes get overloaded in the way an old computer system does: error, crash, restart." </p><p>basically, Elliot gets cuddles</p><p>(2nd & 3rd chapters are optional episode-related sequels in case you need more cuddles)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. subroutine

I think I sometimes get overloaded in the way an old computer system does: error, crash, restart. I don’t know why my mind chose today but some point, seeing her, became part of my routine. I get up, I go to work, I deal with a thousand inane interactions, and when the world gets too much and the morphine doesn’t cut it, I come to her.

I knock on her door. She lives on the floor above mine. Sometimes I like to think I could have lived like she does and never leave the apartment complex. If I traveled between hers, and mine, and Shayla’s, I would have been fine. Too late for regrets now, what’s done is done.

She opens the door. We don’t even need to speak anymore; she knows why I’m here and what I want. She studies me and I do the same: her long hair is tangled, her eyes tired, her clothes even more rumpled than usual. The night terrors again, maybe. It’s late. Maybe I woke her from one.

She stands aside to let me in.

I’ve hacked her, of course. Before I even stepped over the threshold, and definitely before I let her get close. I hacked her as soon as I found out her name from the groceries she orders. I think I feel safe around her because her whole life is online. People exaggerate on blogs, but she keeps a private one as well, and that one I know to be true. I know it, because I see the evidence every time I visit. I know that she’s a little like me, enough, at least, that, like two negative charges, I cannot spend too much time around her. I tried to read her latest journal entries before I visited, so I would know what to expect, but it’s been three days since her last update. I thought maybe she was getting better, but maybe not.  

I take off my shoes and put them by the door. I watch as she sets herself up on the couch. She doesn’t seem to get as uncomfortable around me as other people. I can stare, or I can look away, or I can just stand like this and say nothing, and she never makes me feel wrong for doing it.

She’s sitting in her night clothes, leaning back against the back of the couch, a pillow on her lap, and an electronic reading device in her hands. I watch as her thumb presses against the sides of the device. She’s still choosing what to read. I know what kind of stories she likes. I don’t understand why she likes them, but they seem to help her, and I’m not in the position to judge; reading is probably healthier than morphine, after all.

She settles, her elbow perched on the armrest, the e-reader raised, her lap an open invitation.

The first step always used to be hard, but it comes easier now, it’s what comes after that’s the hard part.

I walk towards her. Sit beside her. Lower my head to the pillow on her lap.

I get comfortable, shuffle around a little, tucking my feet in at the other end of the couch. The scratchy blanket beside me and the smell of the cushion against my cheek has become familiar.

I close my eyes, and her hand comes to rest on my shoulder. At her first simple touch, I deflate. My mind empties. The stress leaves me. The world narrows to the feel of her hand. This is why I can only come to her when I am at my worst. Any other time, and touch like this would only build my defences, but if I time it right, then her touch is what knocks them down.

Her hand moves as she reads, sometimes her fingers are in my hair, sometimes her thumb rubs circles on my back, but it’s steady and reassuring.

I don’t need to worry that she will take it any further because she’s not interested in that, but I also know that she must get _something_ from my visits because when she writes in her journal after I’ve visited, she always says that she had a good night’s sleep. It’s a beneficial arrangement we have, if an unusual one.

Time becomes meaningless as I lay there. Nothing exists outside of the touch between us, not even my own mind. Hours could have passed. But as relaxed as I am under her hands, I can never fall asleep here. I wait for her movements to slow, for her breath to even out, and the steady clicking of the e-reader to cease, and then I tell myself that I should leave.

This is what I meant by the hard part: As soon as I leave, I know that the world will come back and my defences will start building again.

Her hand slips in her sleep until it’s resting against above the pulse point in my neck. I count forty-two heartbeats before I have the strength to break away from the embrace.

I move away slowly, so I don’t wake her. I reach for the blanket and spread it over her, and place the cushion I used carefully under her head. Her nose wrinkles in her sleep. She looks peaceful, I just hope it stays that way.

I pick up my shoes, and let myself out.

As soon as the door closes behind me, the world comes back. I can hear the racket of our neighbours below, and feel the shaking of my hand, and my mind is suddenly filled with a chaotic scramble of code and doubt and people.

I close my eyes.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Reboot complete.


	2. m1stake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After 1x06 "br4ve-trave1er" Elliot doesn't know how to process until he finds himself at our friend's door again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't intending to write more, but then Shayla happened and then this happened. Unbeta'd.

Shayla was with me the whole time, in the trunk of the car, not a foot from me. I don’t know how to process that. 

If I had known it was all for nothing, would I have made the choices I did? No. Almost certainly not. 

I had been so sure. “I don’t make mistakes”, I’d said. What bullshit. You can code the simplest program for years and it will still, eventually, make a mistake - a user will input something that it doesn’t know how to handle, and boom, that’s it, game over - and humans are far more fallible than machines. And I am human, I am ordinary. I see that now. I got cocky, and now Shayla is dead, and the bad guys go free, and there is nothing that I can do. 

So, I walk. Away from her body. Away from the blaring sirens of the prison. I keep walking. And like a slow reboot I try to process what went wrong. But whatever the input, the output is the same: Me. I’m wrong. It’s my fault. And then, I find that I’m walking just to find a reason not to die.

I don’t intend for it to happen, but I find myself outside her door again. Some sort of stupid survival instinct, I guess. As soon as I knock, I regret it - I don’t want touch; I want to forget - I should have found some morphine, knocked myself out - 

She answers the door before I can even turn away. She must have been awake. 

“I don’t want anything,” I say quickly, before she gets the wrong idea. 

“Okay…?” she replies. 

It’s not our usual routine. I’ve broken this too. Is there anything I touch that doesn’t die? I should check on Qwerty. Vera’s probably sadistic enough to have killed him too. 

I turn to leave again but her voice catches me: “Do you want to come in anyway?”

Do I? I don’t know. I want to go back twenty-four hours. I want to accidentally maybe-not-accidentally pump too much morphine in my veins. I want to go with Shayla to a stupid Marvel movie. But none of these things are possible. 

“It kinda looks like you don’t want to be alone right now,” she tries. “Or, at least, I don’t think you should be alone right now. Was it… a bad day?”

This is the most we’ve ever talked, I realise, and it’s completely one-sided. 

I nod. My hood is still raised. It’s dark in the corridor. If my eyes are red, I don’t know if she can see them. “Something like that.” 

“Do you want to… talk about it?” 

I huff. 

“You’re right, that would be… ridiculous. Not like us. I mean, you can if you - ?” 

I shake my head.

“No, okay then. So…” she tails off. She seems to have given up trying to talk to me. I don’t blame her. I never should have come here. 

I look up. She has disappeared, but her door is open. An invitation. I hear the sound of the television and the boiling of a kettle. It fills me with a strange sense of calm. Ordinary people. Ordinary things. Ordinary life. I wonder if my neighbour truly understands the service she offers me. 

I enter and see her pouring water over a tea bag. I close the door behind me. Do I find the smell of herbal tea relaxing just because I associate it with this space? 

She sits curled up on the couch, her feet tucked beneath her, the mug of tea in her hands. She’s watching a boxset of an old science fiction show. But it doesn’t matter what’s on the screen, I’m not here for that. I sit down on the other end of the couch and she doesn’t make a move to touch me, or talk to me, like this is all completely normal. I don’t think I know what normal looks like anymore. 

I close my eyes, and for the first time I don’t see the contents of the trunk. I see nothing. Blissful nothingness. It’s like I have overdosed, and died, and erased the last twenty-four hours, and all by sitting on this couch. 

After the nothingness, my mind stirs back to life, and this time, my thoughts are clear: I am human. I made a mistake. But so did Vera. 

He never should have asked for my help. He never should have taken Shayla. One day Vera will make another mistake, and I will be watching, and I will take him down. 

My eyes open again. Hours have passed. Five episodes, at least. I am still sat straight-backed on the couch, hands on my knees, eyes forward, but I feel more rested than before. I expect to see my companion snoring softly by now, but when I turn my head, she catches my eye; she has been watching me. 

“Better?” she asks. 

I nod my head.

She breaks the eye contact with a small nod. “Okay.” 

She turns back to watch the television, and I take my leave, until next time.


	3. defrag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post- season 1 finale

She’s at my door. Why is she at my door? Today has been impossible, is this another impossibility? I am not me anymore, but was I ‘me’ the last time I saw her? Truly? Have I ever really been ‘me’? This is too much. _Why is she here?_

“Why are you here?”

She looks to the ground. Shuffles her feet. She’s not in her house. This is all wrong. There’s boundaries; we have boundaries. Did I break them too? Those are tears. Fuck. Why is she crying?

“Are you...okay?”

She sniffles. “No,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying as she says it. 

“I’m not good with… this. What is it that you need?”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t need… you know, what? I’m just going to go -”

I grab her wrist. Her eyes snap to mine. Too tight. I’m holding too tightly. I relax my grip. What’s wrong with me? I never would have hurt her like this the last I saw her, but back then I thought I knew myself, and now she is the only normal in everything, and I am an exhausted man in a desert, desperate for water. Is she real? Is she outside of this mess I’ve created? I want to know.  

“I’m sorry,” I say, and drop her wrist. “I want to help.”   

“Then, can I?” she indicates behind me. The chaos of the revolution is still displayed on my screen. There’s a couch I haven’t sat on for days. I can’t make her tea. Her house is a safe space for both of us, why has she changed the routine? But I step aside anyway, and close the door behind her.

“Thank you,” she says, and then she reaches for me.

It’s an invitation. I eye her outstretched hand warily. I don’t know this situation. She wants touch, but what if I don’t want it? Or I want it too much and hurt her again? She is always the one to comfort me, I don’t know how to comfort anyone. 

My gaze moves from her hand to her face; it’s breaking before my eyes. She’s the only friend I have left. _Friend_. Has she really become that to me? The woman upstairs who I’ve never even uttered the name of. But she means _something_ to me, I can’t deny that, and I won’t let her hurt like this. How many times has she held me? I don’t remember, but I want to return the favour.

I take her hand, slowly, and step towards her, until she’s wrapping her arms around me. It’s familiar. And I need familiar. I pull her closer, breathe in the scent of herbal tea on her neck, it feels like safety. She holds me just as tight. She cries freely now, the tears soaking my clothes, but I don’t mind it. My hand finds her back and I try to mimic what she does when I see her; circles that are meant to be comforting. What’s comforting about a circle? It’s never-ending. There’s nothing comfortable about that.

“What happened?” I ask.

“What _didn’t_ happen?” she counters. 

She has a point. The world has changed irreversibly. At my hands. What would she do if she knew that? I could be the cause of her distress. I don’t know, and I won’t know, unless one of us says something, but we don’t talk, that’s not what we do. Anything could have happened to her in the last three days, but also, anything could have happened to _me_. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s _real_. She’s the most real thing I have. A cornerstone when I thought I had no building blocks left. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “I don’t think I ever thanked you.”

“Could say the same for you,” she mumbles into my clothes.

But why? This is the first time I’ve given her anything.

She raises her head a little, “It helps… just having a connection, you know?” Her eyes dart to mine and away again. Embarrassed.

“I…” I don’t know how to say this. I don’t trust anything with a first personal pronoun any longer. I don’t know anything about ‘I’.

She looks to me again. I owe her something, don’t I? Some truth, whatever I can manage.

Eventually, I say, “I’m not a good person.” I don’t really know if that’s true, but I can imagine if a sane person was presented with the evidence that I have, they might draw that conclusion. 

She nods. She’s not arguing. We don’t know a thing about each other, not really. I know her browser history, but that doesn’t equate to much, I realise that now, and she doesn’t even have that to go on. Does she even know my name? I don’t remember. “Okay,” she says. 

I don’t understand. Why is she so accepting? She’s still in my arms and she doesn’t look like she’s planning to run away. “I don’t… understand. I’m telling you that it’s not safe. I might hurt you. Or they will. I don’t even know… me. I don’t know _anything_ …” it’s coming back to me, too fast, the haze is clearing; the respite she gave me at her touch beginning to disappear…

She grips my chin in her hands, pulls my eyes down to hers. “Elliot,” she says. “Thank you.”

Is it that simple? She holds me again and my doubts are forgotten. I am no one else in her arms.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm determined that this is the END of this blatant-self-insert-OC, that Mr Robot will give me no more feels that I need to resolve in cuddles. So on that note, I have a [tumblr](http://vands88.tumblr.com/) aaaaaaand a shameless self-promo, I'm sorry, but I also made some [Mr Robot designs](http://geekynessdesigns.tumblr.com/post/128409300037/youre-only-in-my-head-i-am-mr-robot-as). Thank you so much for reading, especially so if you showed me some love, I really appreciate it. <3


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